Contextual Influence

I was wondering about the effectiveness of contextual influence

one day when what I just said repeated itself differently, an echo in my head. Reinforced unconnected thoughts affecting attitude, you know, previous choice affecting next available options. So I put myself though a little experiment. A pair of dice. Twelve possible outcomes, numberous ways they can be reached. I rolled the dice in the morning, and later, when I went to bed, made a mental note about how I felt about the day.

After about two weeks I noticed some simple meaningless patterns.

When I got doubles I'd remember lucky breaks I had during the day. When I got five through nine, I'd have next to no luck, had to slug through everything. Lower numbers tended to be good, higher numbers tended to mean easy but possibly boring. That became my context, my contextual influence.

So for the next month I'd get a random preview of my day with

a pair of dice. Geordan was also playing with this idea. He had a picture of a hyperbola that had circles between the lines. First he would show people a list of words and then the picture, theory being that the list he showed them would affect what they see. Some people saw a shaft of light, some saw planets, water bubbles, cheese, etc. Totally random, contextual influence.

And it's so limiting. I mean, just because a kid says something

we ignore it, because someone is young they can't qualify for a job, they are a woman so their idea can be taken lightly, or the wrong political party offers an idea and it must be ignored because you don't believe in their stance on abortion or gun control. Or it could be a hot-button topic so everyone sprouts and bristles with a litmus test of opinion without really listening to all the other sides. Are we starting to see the importance of contextual influences yet? Of previous influencing next and of thought processes limiting us?

Contextual influence can be benign, but most often it's bad.

Most of the time we walk in with prejudiced notions of how the nature of reality and nevermind what other people have to say, we know what is right, dammit!

This is what hype is all about, the ``it must be good'' sydrome.

Tell 500 million people ``It's the BEST!'' and some of them will believe you. There is no greater motivator of public opinion than a monsterous crowd of people cheering for something. Of course you know I was going to relate it to pop culture, didn't you?

And me? I didn't relate Geordan's experiment, I don't think I

saw a connection between the words and the the graphic, but you'll have to ask him. I think I saw sheet metal or something. Go figure, don't remember what words he showed me. Oh, and the dice? Those are loaded. What do you expect, might as well give yourself a positive contextual influence if you can morally justify forgetting about the context you're influencing yourself with. Anyone got a job opening in poltics or advertising or political advertising?

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Out of Order

After about two weeks I noticed some simple meaningless patterns.
	When I got doubles I'd remember lucky breaks I had during the day. When I got five through nine, I'd have next to no luck, had to slug through everything. Lower numbers tended to be good, higher numbers tended to mean easy but possibly boring. That became my context, my contextual influence.

So for the next month I'd get a random preview of my day with
	a pair of dice. Geordan was also playing with this idea. He had a picture of a hyperbola that had circles between the lines. First he would show people a list of words and then the picture, theory being that the list he showed them would affect what they see. Some people saw a shaft of light, some saw planets, water bubbles, cheese, etc. Totally random, contextual influence.

Contextual influence can be benign, but most often it's bad.
	Most of the time we walk in with prejudiced notions of how the nature of reality and nevermind what other people have to say, we know what is right, dammit!

This is what hype is all about, the ``it must be good'' sydrome.
	Tell 500 million people ``It's the BEST!'' and some of them will believe you. There is no greater motivator of public opinion than a monsterous crowd of people cheering for something. Of course you know I was going to relate it to pop culture, didn't you?